


Global and Eternal

by tricatular



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:36:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2799818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricatular/pseuds/tricatular
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attempted coup forces Attolia and Eugenides to the limits of their ingenuity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Global and Eternal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wildehack (Tyleet)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/gifts).



If they had seen it coming, either Attolis or Attolia could have stopped it.

But Baron Koteas had turned up on none of Relius’s lists. He was a middlingly powerful baron with one grown son, neither of them ever implicated in treasonous activity. He seemed to keep an armed guard of only a dozen men – not enough to take on the royal entourage of thirty – when he invited the King and Queen to his estate. The King’s Guard was away at a nearby port where there had been anti-Eddis riots. There had been no reason to be suspicious.

All of these things may have run through the Queen’s mind when the baron, smiling, opened the door of his great hall, and showed her the King’s body on the floor.

The baron’s son looked up from beside him, swept an exuberant bow and said, “My Queen, you are free!”

The King twitched. Attolia looked up at Koteas. She was always pale, because she wore cosmetics, so no one could say she had changed color.

“Thank you,” she said.

The baron’s son preened, but Koteas himself only met her eyes. There was calculation in her face; the baron had expected nothing less.

“My lady,” he said. Attolia gave no sign of reacting to her demotion. “What will you have done with him?”

“Eddis still values him,” Attolia said. “Keep him alive until we know how she will move.” She turned her head as she gave the order, to where her captain of the guard should have stood. But in his place there was only one of Koteas’s own men, who looked to his baron.

“I will take it under advisement,” Koteas said, with a faint smile. “But first, my lady, we must see to your safety.”

There was a shout from beyond the doorway, and a sudden clash of metal. More shouts, a hoarse cry of pain, and the hiss of air pulled in through a slit lung. “Why, Baron Koteas,” the Queen said, with the sleekness of a pine marten weaving through a crack, “do you have reason to believe it is compromised?”

Koteas waved his hand around the room. They hadn’t yet tidied the corpses away, and a couple of the Queen’s remaining lieutenants were still being guarded. They had sunk down to the floor, unable to look the Queen in the eye. “You can see for yourself the Eddisian agents at your side.”

Attolia’s fingernails rested on the arm of the chair, as if to tap it. But her fingers were perfectly still. If he was waiting for a crack, he didn’t get it.

“It’s not your fault,” the baron’s son said impulsively. He strode forward, started to go to one knee, then pulled himself up with a start. He tried to turn it into an awkward bow. 

“I’m sure you thought some of them were loyal to you.”

On the floor, Eugenides sucked in a sharp breath and raised his head. The baron’s son turned and glared, and the guard hurriedly drove the base of his spear into Eugenides’s head. He slumped to the floor. Attolia watched.

“Indeed,” Attolia said. She spoke to Koteas, past his son. “I had not realized I was so surrounded by traitors.”

Koteas nodded and extended his hand. “I will escort you to your chambers, my lady. Do not fear. We have loyal men to guard the door.”

“The windows as well, I take it?” Attolia said dryly.

Koteas shrugged. “I don’t wish to make this unpleasant,” he said. “But I understand this will be an unsettled period for you. I don’t wish you to rush into making any decisions.”

“Very well,” Attolia said. She rose to her feet, but instead of taking Koteas’s hand, she crossed to the crumpled body of her ex-husband on the floor. She slipped the toe of her shoe under his chin.

He looked up at her, past the blood that had run down the side of his face and collected in one eye. The other one was unfocused. “Irene,” he said. His voice was barely more than a whisper.

“You have had your time,” she said, coldly. “I want you to understand: this was always coming.”

Eugenides choked. He put his head down, shaking his head to try and clear his eye like an animal in a trap. “Irene,” he said again, “no, please. Please.”

“You did not steal me,” she said. “I was never yours.” She withdrew her foot, and fastidiously tapped it against the floor as if knocking off dirt.

“He is more useful alive,” she said to Koteas. “But take care. Give him the slightest leeway, and he will wriggle through it.”

“As we all well know,” Koteas said.

The Queen nodded as she swept past him. “As I know well, indeed.”

 

*

 

The ex-King of Attolia did not speak as they pulled him down the corridors. They bound his forearms behind his back, tightening the cords until they dug into his skin so he couldn’t slip his handless wrist through them. He seemed less devastated than he had been in the great hall. He even lifted his head as they went out into the courtyard, and stared fuzzily up at the walls.

The only prison in the estate was the holding cells under the guard house, not nearly as extensive as that of the palace. Eugenides followed Koteas’s lieutenant through the door without resistance, but when they opened the door to the cell, he stumbled and leaned against the wall outside. It was cold, so it must have been the pain of his crusting head wound that was making him sweat. His color was like looking at an upright corpse.

The guards stopped. They were wary, their swords drawn, since the King had a reputation as a fearsome fighter. Two of them grabbed his shoulders.

They had been expecting resistance. They hadn’t been expecting the screaming.

 

*

 

Attolia, in her room, had allowed her maids to dress her hair and then dismissed them. They could not walk the corridors freely, except one from a vassal family of Koteas’s, so they sat in the anteroom beside the guards and whispered nervously. She could hear them from inside. The evening light had been failing for some time. The last sunset-tinted bar fell across her knees.

An oil lamp flared.

“Sitting in the dark, my lady?” Koteas said.

Attolia looked up.

“I want his hook,” she said abruptly.

Koteas smile was the easy bemusement of someone who is not threatened by losing the thread of the conversation, because it costs them nothing. “His hook?”

“My heirloom ring is welded into the metal base of it,” she said. “It is my most valuable piece. I would like it back.”

“An odd place to put it,” said Koteas.

“It was his idea, not mine,” she said coldly. “A Queen is not free, my lord, as I know you see. And _he_ was very much in love.”

“My lady, I see very clearly,” said Koteas. “But surely you don’t lack for wealth.” He lit another lamp and picked up a goblet on the table, examining the silver chasing. Attolia’s eyes followed every touch of his long fingers over it.

“But will I?” she said. “I do not see that is in my control.”

“On the contrary, my lady,” Koteas said. He smiled at her. “You have had poor experience with marriage, maybe, but I am not such a tyrant as either of your barbaric husbands. We can negotiate.”

She rose to her feet and reached for the cup, but he closed his fingers around it and whisked it back. “No, no,” he said teasingly, “I know you and wine.”

The whole court had seen her uneasy exchanges with Eugenides over his wine cup, but she seemed to have a weakness for that kind of talk, because, finally, she smiled. Her manner became easier. “You will have to bring your own cup to dinner, then, my lord.”

“And my own plates,” he said, amused. “I flatter myself I am one step ahead of even your last husband.”

The Queen’s eyes fell, though whether she lowered them or was merely contemplating the frieze on the opposite wall was a matter for debate. “I think we can negotiate, my lord,” she said. “If I were to keep my wealth and jewels, I think much could be left in your hands.”

“Negotiation is all I ask.”

“My heirloom ring,” she said. “As an earnest of your good intent.”

“Perhaps on my second visit,” Koteas said, and smiled. “As an earnest of yours.”

“When you wish, my lord,” Attolia said. “But be careful how you remove it. There are secret levers to press to bring it out.”

Koteas shrugged. “I can melt the hook and recover the gold. You can have it remade.”

The Queen clasped the pendant at her neck, which was gold and onyx, as if the thought pained her. But though her hands betrayed her, her voice was inexpressive, even cold, as she said, “You could.”

 

* 

 

There was a barred vent still left from when the cells had been built as storerooms, decades ago. It was little more than a courtyard drain. But free of bars, it might let someone out, if they were athletic and desperate. If they had two hands.

Eugenides had climbed to the top of his cell wall and was holding himself in place with an elbow crooked round the bars. The tiny saw in his hand was not large, but neither was the metal of the bars well-forged. His eyes focused and unfocused. Sweat rolled down his face, taking off fragments of the dried blood.

He breathed steadily to keep himself going.

“What are you doing?” The door slammed, and Eugenides nearly fell away. An irritated guard strode in and wrenched him down from the vent. Eugenides was apparently past even swearing. His skin was the waxy texture of tallow. 

The guard was impatient and going off shift, and his girlfriend – the Queen’s deserter maid – clung to the doorpost and looked on at the search, wide-eyed. It was a matter of moments before the guard had found both the saw Eugenides was using and the backup one in his sleeve.

He tucked them both into his belt and shoved the king half-upright against the wall. “Stay inside, your majesty.”

“Do hurry up,” said the maid, petulantly. “I have to get to market before sundown.”

Eugenides was barely conscious by this time. He panted, his eyes glazed over, and slipped down the wall, and let his head rest against the stone ground.

 

*

 

Attolia was graceful and quiet at dinner two days later. She did not attempt to charm Koteas. They did not talk of the ring in the King’s hook. The only mention they made of her husband was when they spoke of Eddis, and of ridding Attolia of the foreigners.

“You must have experience with making him co-operate,” Koteas said.

“Very little,” Attolia said. She was eating steadily, almost disturbingly so. “You forget, my lord, he set it up so I was disadvantaged from the first.” There was something of the clockwork automaton in the way her hand moved to cut the meat. “If he gives you trouble, I suggest you break his functional arm. You may send for people from the palace.”

“I believe I _may_ do a little more than that,” Koteas said.

“Of course,” Attolia said. “It was merely a suggestion.” She turned the talk to Sounis, and that was all the resistance she offered for the evening. Koteas relaxed, drinking a little deeper from his jealously guarded cup. And at the end, when the moon was high in the sky, he pushed his chair back and sent a page boy running from the room.

The boy returned before Koteas and Attolia had finished another cup of wine. In his hands, he held the sad thing of leather and curved metal that had been Eugenides’s hook.

“My lady,” Koteas said, with a seated bow. “Forgive the twisting. My men looked for the levers, but there were none we could find.”

Attolia held out her hand imperiously for the hook. “They are hard to see,” she said. She waited until the boy had gone out of the room, and turned the hook in her hands. “Look closer.”

 

* 

 

The manor was tense, but there were still noises in the warm night.

A guard and a maid rolled in a corner of the dark courtyard with whispers and muffled laughs. The few people who saw them averted their eyes in embarrassment or amusement. 

In an odd pause in the lovemaking, something saw-like and metal – two things – fell down the courtyard drain beside them, but they carried on, and neither of them seemed to have noticed. There was no noise from the Queen’s rooms above them.

Far away, at the edges of hearing, there was the tramp of marching footsteps.

 

* 

 

The dawn light was silver on last night’s dinner table by the time Attolia lifted her head. A second later there was an earth-shattering rumble and the floor shook. Her shoulders untensed, just a fraction. The sounds of fighting drew nearer.

She waited until the door unlocked, and she said, “You are late.”

Attolia, at least, had the advantage of face powder. It covered up the worst of the circles under her eyes, and the strain of little sleep and little food. Eugenides only had dirt and stone dust, which covered nothing. There was blood encrusted down the side of his face, and there was blood on her hands and the hook she held across her lap.

The blunted saw fell from Eugenides’s hand. He looked down at Koteas, who was past interfering with their meeting.

He took a heavy step into the room. “I’m sorry.”

Attolia said nothing. He was young for this, she thought. She felt bodiless, like the thin light through the window, looking at both of them with nothing to say. If he was young for it, what did that make her? But youth was a luxury, like innocence, that neither of them could afford now.

She should rise from her chair and welcome him. She should question him on the dead and on the position of the reinforcements. There was very much left to do. She could not afford to be immature about it.

But she stayed silent, and opened her hand a little on the arm of her chair.

And then he was in front of her, half-crouching, half kneeling, and he held her hand so tightly that she thought the blood might stop. His eyes were squeezed shut.

“I should have made it out earlier,” he said.

“How?” she said.

“I,” said Eugenides. He shifted his stump and fiddled with his cuff. He looked down at her feet, then up at her hairline. “I should have found _something_.”

“If you had, it would reflect poorly on me.”

“I know.” They were both aware that if he’d escaped before the King’s Guard reinforcements had come, he would have killed himself getting to her. His gaze finally made it to her eyes again. “But I wondered, for a moment, you know. In the cell, after you—”

“I know,” said Attolia.

Eugenides took a breath that was just this side of a sob, and rested his forehead against her leg. They stayed like that for a moment. She had her hand on his head now, stroking the hair.

There was a hammering on the door and Eugenides flinched. Attolia’s lips thinned, but she rose to her feet with him, and called, “Come.”

At the first sound, Lieutenant Costis burst into the room, wild-eyed and panting. “Your Majesties!”

“Yes,” Eugenides said. Then, as a moment passed and Costis didn’t seem to be able to line up any more words, he said, patiently, “Do you have something to say, or did you come here just to gape like a fish?”

“You left _ten dead men_ in the anteroom, my King!”

Eugenides gave a negligent flip of his hand. “Is that what you came to complain about? The mess?”

“We would have helped!”

Attolia frowned. “You left your guards behind,” she said to Eugenides.

“They couldn’t keep up with me,” Eugenides protested.

“That’s because you brought the ceiling down on our heads!” said Costis, whose manners had apparently deserted him along with his wayward king.

Attolia raised her eyes at her husband. “The _ceiling_?” she said. “With what?”

“ _Flour!_ ” said Costis. “They’d holed up at the top of the stairs, and that madman went into the kitchen and _exploded the place with flour!_ ”

“Costis, Costis,” Eugenides said, and Costis apparently heard what he himself had just called the King, because his face flooded with red. “It was all part of the plan. I would have told you but I didn’t want you to fret about it.”

This had gone quite far enough. “My King,” said Attolia, repressively. “Do you plan to stay here baiting Lieutenant Costis, or are you going to help deal with this situation?”

“Back to work,” the King said mournfully. “I was having a nice rest in that cell. You’d better clear the corridors, Costis, and then form up the guard in the great hall.” His shoulders slumped, apparently at the thought of all the work, until Costis had left the room with Koteas’s body.

Attolia took his hand. Eugenides spun to face her, bringing their hands up in a smooth movement. “I had plans,” he said, his voice at once more uncertain and more intense. 

Attolia said nothing, only wrapped her fingers between his.

“I had _three_ plans,” he said. “Each more complicated than the last.”

“I can imagine,” she said.

Eugenides caught his breath. “But they all started with finding you alive,” he said, as if this, of all his admissions, was hard to say.

She didn’t even reply to that. She was carved from stone.

“And I’m sorry.”

“ _You_ are sorry,” said Attolia. Her head must have moved, finally, because a vicious flash of red light refracted through her hairpin and stained the wall.

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Yes, me.”

“Why?”

“I should have trusted you,” he said.

“After I—”

“You never stopped me doing anything I had to,” Eugenides said. “I wouldn’t have stopped you. I just– I forgot. It’s hard to be helpless.”

She met his eyes, both of them seeking understanding, both of them afraid of exposing too much. Whatever they found in the other’s eyes, the next moment they both had their arms around each other, tightly, as if they knew the other was the one thing they couldn’t break.

Irene was the first one to draw her hand back. “Here,” she said. “Your hook.” He let her buckle it on, but he bowed his head and stared at the blood staining it. “Dismayed?” she said, and nearly managed to say it lightly.

“Yes,” he said, and she tensed. Eugenides raised his head. “Well, I don’t want to take your credit.”

Irene stared at him. “My King,” she said. “You are ridiculous.”

He grinned. “Maybe,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her. “But I know don’t mind, because I’m still alive.”

Irene nearly smiled, as if it was an old joke. “I couldn’t kill you if I wanted to.”

“That makes both of us,” Eugenides said. He held out his arm to her. “Shall we go and rescue Costis, my Queen?”

“About time, my King,” Irene said. She took his arm, and the King and Queen of Attolia went out to take back their kingdom.


End file.
